For the cleaning of fabric articles consumers have the choice of conventional aqueous immersive wash laundry cleaning or dry cleaning.
Conventional laundry cleaning is carried out with relatively large amounts of water, typically in a washing machine at the consumer's home, or in a dedicated place such as a coin laundry. Although washing machines and laundry detergents have become quite sophisticated, the conventional laundry process still exposes the fabric articles to a risk of dye transfer and shrinkage. A significant portion of fabric articles used by consumers are not suitable for cleaning in such a conventional laundry process. Even fabric articles that are considered “washing machine safe” frequently come out of the laundry process badly wrinkled and require ironing.
Most dry cleaning processes rely on non-aqueous solvents for cleaning. By avoiding water these processes minimize the risk of shrinkage and wrinkling. The need for handling and recovering large amounts of solvents make these dry cleaning processes unsuitable for use in the consumer's home. The need for dedicated dry cleaning operations makes this form of cleaning inconvenient and expensive for the consumer.
More recently, dry cleaning processes have been developed which make use of compressed gases, such as supercritical carbon dioxide, as a dry cleaning medium. Unfortunately these processes have many shortcomings, for example they require very high pressure equipment.
Other drycleaning processes have recently been described which make use of nonsolvents such as perfluorobutylamine. These also have multiple disadvantages, for example the nonsolvent fluid cannot adequately dissolve body soils and is extremely expensive.
Accordingly there are unmet needs for new apparatus, methods, and compositions for cleaning or treating fabric articles that are safe for a wide range of fabric articles, minimize shrinkage and wrinkling, and can be adapted to a cost effective use in the consumer's home and/or in service businesses and commercial environments.